Pitt’s 0-7 record against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., is a meaningless bit of trivia.
For the record, Pat Narduzzi shares those losses with former Pitt coaches Paul Chryst and Walt Harris, even Jackie Sherrill and Johnny Majors.
As expected and as he should, Narduzzi scoffed at the stat.
“What’s happened in the past will have no effect on what will happen Saturday. It’s won between the lines,” he said.
Just for fun, let’s look at the four losses in Chapel Hill since Pitt joined the Tar Heels in the ACC.
• Drake Maye’s 388 yards and five touchdown passes in a 42-24 victory in 2022? Forget it.
• Those three UNC touchdowns in less than a six-minute span in the third quarter of a 38-35 loss in 2018? Doesn’t matter six years later.
• Those two 2-yard TD flips from Mitch Trubisky to Bug Howard in the last 5 minutes, 24 seconds of a 37-36 loss in 2016? Trubisky’s 453 yards and five touchdowns through the air that day? Not important.
• T.J. Logan 1-yard run with 50 seconds left to claim a 40-35 victory in 2014. Another team, another coach, another time.
The point: Pitt’s defense looks to be significantly improved over its predecessors.
Yet Narduzzi must admit it’s time to change the narrative, including this one: Pitt never has intercepted a pass while giving up 13 touchdowns through the air in four games in Chapel Hill as an ACC member.
Pitt (4-0, 0-0) gets another shot at North Carolina (3-2, 0-1) at noon Saturday in the first of eight ACC games that will define the season. Meanwhile, here are five storylines:
1. A six-year senior
Brandon George hasn’t been a fixture on the Pitt campus as long as the Cathedral of Learning, which was host to its first class in 1931. It only seems that way.
George, who was a freshman middle linebacker in 2019, will play his 57th game for Pitt on Saturday. Believe it or not, that’s not a school record. Long snapper Cal Adomitis holds that distinction with 64 games.
In the midst of his sixth season and holding a degree in business information systems, George thinks the game as well as he plays it.
“I like to pride myself on being a very mentally astute football player, a very cerebral football player,” he said. “I’m bigger than a lot of the linebackers you see nowadays. I’m not necessarily your prototypical linebacker in the sense of how the game is played currently. I have to be on top of my P’s and Q’s as far as how I approach the game from a preparation standpoint.
“Being 6-3, going on 6-4, 242 pounds, you’re at a disadvantage sometimes when you’re going against (Pitt wide receiver) Poppi Williams, who is a little bit quicker than you. At the same time, since I’m more physical than him, I know if he starts to run this route concept and I get hands on him, the play’s dead.”
2. Welcome back, Desmond
Desmond Reid will be back after missing the decisive touchdown drive against West Virginia and the Youngstown State game with an injury. He’s still third in the ACC in rushing yards per game (106.3). His speed and elusiveness can be game-changing, perhaps even season-changing.
Reid is second in the nation in average all-purpose yards (188). The leader in that category is early Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty of Boise State (216).
Can big games to close out October — UNC, Cal-Berkeley and Syracuse (prime time, national TV) — insert Reid into the Heisman conversation?
3. On the other side …
Reid and quarterback Eli Holstein are key when Pitt has the ball, but the best way to ensure victory is to stop UNC running back Omarion Hampton.
Hampton (6-foot, 220 pounds) is the reigning ACC rushing champion (1,504 yards and 115.7 per game). After five games this season, he has rushed for 658 and 131.6.
Pitt safeties coach Cory Sanders offered reporters a mini clinic on how to tackle Hampton.
“You have to step all the way on his toes and run your feet on those tackles and shoot those arms and bring those hips with you,” he said “If you start diving, he’s going to run right through your tackles. You tackle too high, he’s going to run through your tackles. He’s very physical with his stiff-arm.”
Sanders understands missed tackles are a fact of life, but there’s an antidote, he said. “We have to have that second, third, fourth guy flying in there as well to clean those things up.”
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Hampton also has 13 catches for 107 yards, and the Tar Heels like to use him on screen plays, Narduzzi said. That was a focus at practice this week.
“I don’t feel like we’ve been great on the screens,” Narduzzi said. “(North Carolina) can plow it out on the edge, so it will limit how much (pass rush) pressure you can go with.”
Pitt is 12th in the nation in tackles for a loss (7.8), tied with four teams. But running backs C.J. Donaldson (6-2, 238) of West Virginia and Corey Kiner (5-9, 210) of Cincinnati carried a total of 39 times for 228 yards.
4. Cruce’s time
The targeting penalty against safety P.J. O’Brien in the second half two weeks ago means he must sit out the first half Saturday. That clears the way for Steel Valley’s Cruce Brookins to get more playing time, something that was happening anyway.
“Cruce is moving along very well right now,” Sanders said. “Being strong and violent on our finishes.”
Coaches hoped Brookins, a redshirt freshman, would get between 70 and 90 snaps before ACC play began, and Sanders said he’s had 84, more than half in the base defense.
“You’ll see more of him in this first half and throughout this game. He’s made the most of his opportunities,” Sanders said.
Brookins has recorded nine tackles and one of Pitt’s five interceptions.
Asked what he learned at Steel Valley, Brookins said, “The main thing they taught me is toughness. If you don’t have toughness, you’re not going to be able to go out there and play. That’s what football is built on.”
5. He said it …
“I ain’t a big fan of Tar Heels, but I know we got to go to work on those boys. I know they have a good team. They have some big guys up front and some athletic guys at linebacker.”
— Pitt center Lyndon Cooper, a transfer from N.C. State, with a warning.
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.